Jiří Suchý: Reading at The Prague Writers' Festival

The Puddle

1

It rained
and when the rain went away
it had left behind a puddle under the windows
and that evening
the red dusk was mirrored in it
and a child passing by
started calling out:
Mommy the puddle is bleeding...

The puddle
self-confident at the start
then started to dry up
and today is no more
vanished
but those few days ago it was shimmering gorgeously
a little mountain lake
that when I bent over it
eagerly reflected my face

But what can I do, I'm something of a poet
and so what came to pass came to pass:
I beheld in the puddle not only myself
but also a multitude
a fictitious multitude of dour field surgeons
and it even seemed to me
that I spotted Lenin among them

The field surgeons were returning from a battle
where legions of valiant bowmen
had clashed with a handful of squirrels
and what is incredible is
that they were soundly defeated by them

Their general was named Zizi called the Mighty
though his men called him nothing but Kadrnožka
but let us return to the field surgeons

There they stood in bloody kaftans
and voices tuned the deepest they'd go
they sang a song full of ire
and its melody sent the puddle rippling

These are the words of their song:

Brandy made from plums to buy
For a cut suspender
And on the graves of three dead brides
To dance the sarabande

And then the deputy returns
From his homeland past
When at tea
He's telling me
Of injustice
And cruelty
We craftily
Roll up our sleeves
And make of him an ass

Once this song's sweet tone
Has turned to slag and stone
For us it be an omen
That it's time to fight

Our malice it has grown
From seeds most nobly sewn:
Our foes broken bones
We shall set aright
We lustful wound-tenders
Who tend wounds and lecher
Hey hey hey

Those were the words of their song
then they vanished
and the surface of the puddle nervously
tremored
and then she arrived

2

With her last stroke she floated to the centre of the puddle
laughed
and the surface of puddle quivered once more
but this time playfully and hospitably
and she
tenderly beckoned with her hand
and floated off
and for a second I swore
that the puddle from that savoury moment
was perfumed...

3

I knelt down to the surface
and lo – in the shallow depths of the puddle
I spied a landscape
a typical South Bohemian landscape
except for the cliffs except for the cliffs
and the palm trees too didn't really fit

I had the feeling
I wasn't seeing it for the first time
was it déjà vu?
or the echo of one of my former lives
in which I don't believe but who knows?

An absurd idea: I'll ask the puddle!
And it answered:

The landscape at which you gape
is just a random cluster of mirrors in God's kaleidoscope
you first saw it when you were five
at the time you believed the mirrors were this landscape
And then you grew wiser
and seeing the landscape you said: They are mirrors
by a trick of chance clustered into a landscape

And then all I had to do was ripple the surface of the puddle
and the landscape broke apart
Shards – nothing but shards

4

And then the shards clustered into a new picture
a picture of John the Baptist's face
as we know it from the old church portrait
A decapitated head lying on a platter
Though as far as I know
in the portrait the head isn't laughing
here it is
What is the reason for this laughter?
Salome of course
who first asked for his head
and now doesn't know what to do with it

I'd scarcely grasped the meaning
when Salome came in, brazen and fair
so beautiful that the heart constricted
she came and knelt down to the head
and examined it from up close

As if in its extinguished eyes
she sought the answer to the question:
How do I appear to you? Am I beautiful enough? Attractive? Fair?
Instead of an answer the head bit her in the calf
and the whole picture dissolved in the puddle
which had slowly started to dry up

5

But here comes another vision
From the bottom to the surface there approached a frigate
full of men, shaggy and drunk
and in love with the same woman
who was lingering in the captain's cabin
thumbing through an old herbarium
looking for the herb
that would return the blood to her albatross-pale cheeks

The reason for her transparent whiteness was the captain
who with his charitable eyes
apologise daily that
he cannot fulfil her wish
as simple as it is
She wished
that he would, naked before the loathsome crew,
whip her bloody
while singing the old song
Avanti popolo

He didn't know the song and that was the thing
He offered other songs, just as fine if not finer
Gaudeamus igitur
La paloma
La Marseillaise...
She refused, wouldn't budge, and the captain languished
and then, when the sailors, hot-headed with drink,
started to bellow all manner of shanties
one of them started to holler
Avanti o popolo bandiera rossa...

The captain ran out to the singing troupe
and besought him to teach him that song
and promised him many privileges for it:
in place of his shabby shirt
a good-as-new uniform the captain had put aside
because it was beyond his power to button it up
three bottles of top-notch spirits
he was saving for a special occasion
and last of all
for one hour and a half he would lend him his pale mistress

Then for an hour I knelt over the puddle
watching breathlessly as the captain learned the words
learned the melody
and then triumphantly and with a bittersweet feeling
left for his cabin

The woman was sleeping
he woke her with a gentle kiss on the hardened skin of the sole of her foot
and then began to remove her velvet robes
and when the woman was laid bare
he seized the scourge – the cat o' nine tails
and led his love to the upper deck
and from there to the bridge

The drunks quieted and a deathly stillness descended on the boat
and for the first time the roar of the sea could be heard

The pale damsel sensually undulated
and the captain
with a quavering voice began to sing
Avanti o popolo
bandiera rossa...
Then struck with the scourge

Upon which he burst into tears – he could not strike again
because he loved that body
The naked, enraged and humiliated creature
ripped the lash out of the captain's hand
and whipped him unconscious

I leaped into the middle of the puddle
and stomped apart that abhorrent image
A girl was passing by with her dog at that moment
the dog barked at me and she hushed him
Muffikins how many times do I have to tell you
we don't bark at crazies!

And the puddle slowly continued to dry up

6

Its surface was smaller and smaller
but my face still fit inside
I could see my image
and heard myself say:

Tell me puddle
what meant all these visions
that were revealed in your surface?

And the puddle spoke:

The wound-tenders
base and merciful
meant the two sides of your deeds
and the one that swam up and left her scent
was a symbol of the beauty that lets one forget
those deeds that are murky

The landscape that broke into shards
reminded you of the passing nature of all
that you consider eternal
and the head of John the Baptist
that Salome didn't know what to do with
well that's the futility of wishes come true

And the sad tale of the captain imparts
that our good acts
are very often not viable and are
as the saying goes
given their just deserts
And that compassion is just another name for weakness..

Those were the last words of the mysterious puddle
before it dried up entirely

Avanti popolo
hey hey hey


Read at Prague Thursday 11 June, 2009